>> Some are crediting his glider experience with his ability to realize his choices were the river or disaster. I would sooner think it was his years and years sitting in that left seat, landing thousands of times, with the power all but off and knowing by the seat his pants how far that aircraft could go. I would like to know from someone who has flown both gliders and heavy jets if there’s any similarity between them.
Well, yes and no. First the jets: 1/ When the engines are at idle power they are still developing thrust. 2/ If the damaged engines RPM reduced toward zero, the engines would turn into giant drag-producing “barn doors” which would greatly decrease the glide distance. 3/ Since it takes so long for a turbine engine to accelerate from idle power, jets are never flown at idle power on approach - flaps are set to approach setting; this adds lots of drag, so you have to push up the throttles to compensate.
Soooo, the pilots would not have much of an idea how far the thing would glide after the bird strikes in the engines until they sat there and watched the descent rate vs. distance flown for a bit. What they do know, however, is what a 3 degree glideslope looks like visually (for every mile flown the airplane looses 319’ of altitude). That is the angle that nearly every instrument approach is flown at. They could look out to LGA and TEB, watch for a bit, and have a pretty good guess.
Here’s where the glider training helps out. Every glider pilot who has either flown cross-country, or has strayed a bit too far from the home field, is acutely aware of “where am I, how fast am I descending, how strong is the wind, how far can I go, will I have to land off-field?, etc.” Glider flying is not a “oh, cool, look at the pretty clouds” but constant hyper-vigilance, and is usually a low-level gut-gnawing experience.
I suspect those tapes were playing in the captain’s mind all the way down. You can hear it: “We’re going back to LGA.” “How far is TEB?” Then, the glider pilot watching the vertical descent rate, comparing it to the aircraft’s forward movement, and finally realizing a water landing in the Hudson was a better choice than landing a mile short of the TEB North-South runway.
Hope that’s a good answer...
I am not instrument rated and did not know offhand the glideslope for an instrument approach, the 319 feet per mile. You say that's for an instrument approach. Would they use the same attitude for a vfr approach?
Thanks for a very informative post.